Tuesday 16 November 2010

Phil Woolas... oh, yeah, of course!

Phil Woolas, the disgraced Labour MP whose election was overturned by the electoral commission because he claimed his opponent sympathised with terrorists, rang bells. In my mind - in the darker part of my mind where the less important but nevertheless marked names go - he rang bells. And then I happened upon where from - he was the MP who Joanna Lumley embarrassed.

About a year ago, Lumley doorstepped the MP over government plans to deport Gurkas - she wanted them granted full citizenship and for them to be entitled to a state pension. She caught him on some stairs at the BBC and extracted promises from him that the Gurkas would be treated with the respect due soldiers who had fought for this country.

Woolas was the guy who, faced with the glare of the lights and the glittering Joanna Lumley in full Boudicia mode, gave promises he had no right to give, who tried to weasel out of the situation - he was the guy with the deer in the headlamps bewildered smile and the creepy little voice.

He will not be missed.

Saturday 13 November 2010

Go, Go UK Politics

The voiding of the election of Labour MP Phil Woolas because he lied about his opponent during the spring election is the best political story I've heard. It is a story that gives me faith that the UK political system has both integrity and the ability to correct error.

The former National Union of Students president Woolas must have picked up this particular tactic from American politics: he accused his opponent of sympathising with terrorists. I have been shocked by the American influence on our political language in recent times, and it's great to see we have a system that just won't stand for it. Say something so despicable in America and it doesn't matter - you win the election so you win - in the UK we like to have a modicum of decorum.

His election has been thrown out and the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency will decide again on their representative in parliament.

Friday 12 November 2010

50, 000 March on London

There are those who wonder why people of my generation are disillusioned with politics. I would remind them they ignored us when we protested the Iraq war, they blamed us for breaking Britain, saddled us with mind-boggling debt, then they said "There's no jobs for you" quickly adding "now get off benefits, you're a sponge". In April and May, Nick Clegg wooed us with talk of principled stands against cuts and investment in the future of Britain, only to submit sickeningly to an Etonian slug and his party of cannibalistic lizards in the aftermath of an election everybody lost.

I'd say we have good reason to be angry. The minor skirmish during the student fee protest, where a few anarchists smashed up Tory headquarters, could be seen as the first shots of frustration from an entire generation who have basically been sold a pup. In media everywhere it has been reported that way and I understand why.

After all, who doesn't want it to be the start of a cultural reawakening? At last! A reaction to corporatism and to corruption; to the everyday lies of dough-eyed administrators who preside over the neutering of ambition, whose lives consist of ticking boxes and drawing a wage; at last a generation awakens from the stupor brought on by poisoned platitudes and seizes the reins of power from the blind, stupid, complacent failures who run things.

It'd be great, wouldn't it?

However, I can't think of a single time in history when a population with full bellies, warm beds, free expression and secure borders has ever felt the need to forcibly remove its government (I await to be corrected). Things would need to get far worse for disenchantment to spill over into disgruntlement, and from there to outright anger. Beyond that, revolution is still a dozen and more flights of steps away.

So, what was the smashing of windows and throwing of fire extinguisher (note: singular) about? Well, I don't mean to belittle genuine anger, but it wasn't about anything. After all, the main focus of the march was to remind the Lib Dems that they promised not to raise tuition fees - it is the Lib Dems who are betraying the marchers, not the Tories. The Tory party are carrying out what we knew they would do; people voted for them knowing this to be a policy of theirs - they are duty bound to carry out their pledges. The Lib Dems are the focus of the legitimate anger at these measures - yet Tory HQ got trashed.

Why? Because the starry-eyed Lenins who broke the windows with scarves wrapped round their faces are the same who marched against the Iraq war, who protested Bush's visit and the G-20, who show up every May 1st in London to taunt police and disrupt the bus routes. They are the same guys who still hate Conservatives because of Thatcher - the rest of the crowd, who stood by in sympathetic surprise when the starry-eyed Lenins kicked at the glass and burned David Cameron in effigy, were genuinely there to register their anger at a policy.

The starry-eyed Lenin's were there because they are professional protesters who love a big crowd to legitimise their antics and distribute Socialist Worker. They attacked the Tories, not for the cause but because they are starry-eyed Lenins, and so they hate the Tories. No self-respecting student or lecturer would think of smashing windows and occupying the lobby of Tory HQ: it isn't effective, it doesn't help them win sympathy with the electorate and it makes them look like a childish mob of sponges.

I'm afraid that the column inches proclaiming the beginning of a generational shift are premature at best. However, I think they are right that there is more to come, as there will be more marches, many thousands of genuinely upset citizens will come to London for their disparate causes, bringing their placards and their righteous indignation, but the one's tearing up Starbucks and hammering RBS will be the same every time.

Thursday 11 November 2010

The Privileged and the Primeval

Part of the austerity measures put in place by the coalition is a substantial cut of the education budget. Higher education will feel the brunt of that cut, with much of it's funding vanishing, with the hope being that the universities and colleges step in and become self-sufficient bodies.

So student fees are set to rise to pay for it. Subsidies are evaporating - our government is investing as little as it can get away with in the further education of our 18 year old's, the post-graduate education of our graduates and research performed by our turbo-brained workaholic geeks.

Won't somebody please think of the geeks?

When I went to university I could barely afford my place, in fact I only paid it off two years after graduating. It goes without saying that I still owe £(undisclosed) in student loans - but they don't matter. Those fees I struggled so hard to pay off, working throughout my degree as an event supervisor, failing to keep up with the payments and getting away with some luck in the final year (my LEA paid up after refusing to for two years - I never queried it, thinking it must be a clerical error and just not wanting to upset the apple cart) (don't tell them) were substantial.

One time I felt like I was getting on top of them: I remember strolling into the finance department after two years of avoiding the place like the plague and paying off one and a half grand having worked 14 hour days, every day of the winter break. I was so pumped. I wanted to go in with one of those oversized cheques. It was great.

I worked evenings and weekends and tried to get my college work done, including some reading for my dissertation. It was pretty tough. And, in the end, I failed to pay for it all - my sister had to help me out with the last £500. It was just a little too much. Well, those fees are set to triple.

TRIPLE.

That would raise it to £9,000 a year in fees. There's no way an honest man can pay that amount of money and do a course and pay rent. You'd have to be earning at least £15,000 a year - after tax - so that's about an £18,000 salary - and live like a church mouse. It's just not possible for a student to do - you'd have to have a full-time job, thus you would not be able to make it to lectures.

So the result would be that universities would once again be exclusively populated by the well-off and the mollycoddled, with the occasional, intensely driven, insomniac workaholic bucking the trend.

Tomorrow I'm going to discuss the student fee protester's anger. Today I wanted to lay out their argument: tripling student fees will decimate the education of a generation. Working your way through college will not be possible any more. Good, honest students will disappear, to be replaced by the privileged and the complacent.

Let's face it: there's nothing a mob hates more than well-healed young people getting something denied to the poor. It resonates on a primeval level that Emilia, Bertie and the Stillingfleet-Billingshurst twins don't get that £9,000 is a lot of money to commoners. That particular frequency of resonance has a way of smashing windows.

Wednesday 10 November 2010

The Difference Between Communism and Socialism

Apocalyptic arsefaced simpleton Glenn Beck, along with most of America, thinks that Communism and Socialism are the same thing. They are not. It's like saying cream and cheese are the same thing. Or that cream cheese is in anyway a good substitute for both. You would need to be a sick son of a bitch to put a slice of ripe stilton on a chocolate gateau, or double cream in a bun with some jalapenos and salad. In fact, a good home pregnancy test is to read these words and see if you get hungry.

The main, easily quotable, difference between communism and socialism is this: communism necessarily would do away with capitalism; socialism would not. The reason for this is communists distribute wealth according to the needs of people, while socialists distribute wealth according to merit.

So, let's say you are a hard worker in a communist society: no matter how hard you work, how much you produce, you will receive only what you need, while the guy next to you with five babies will receive all he needs regardless of how much sweat he puts into his shifts. So he gets more because he needs more.

However, in a socialist society, if you work your butt off you would receive more the harder you worked. There would be a social safety net for the lazy, randy boy next to you with five babies, but he wouldn't get much for himself if he didn't put in a shift.

Capitalism, whilst not being a perfect fit for socialism, is a decent way of regulating the distribution of wealth as, in theory, it is a meritocracy - you merit more, you get more.

The other thing is power: communism always seems to lead to a few people with all the power, while socialism should really lead to a more even distribution of wealth. That's how Wales and Scotland got their parliaments: the New Labour socialists wanted to decentralise power from Westminster.

And that's how irritating smug gits like Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond have ended up with their little fiefdoms; because a bunch of clueless, vaporous, PR driven socialists were let loose in the halls of power while they still remembered what their ideals looked like. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown gave us Alex Salmond, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unimaginable budget deficit and they still want us to remember them fondly.

Why haven't they been dragged naked through the streets by an angry mob? I really don't know.

But they were socialists. Not communists. If they were communists, we wouldn't have had elections, money would have been scrapped in favour of some sort of state run token system, the reins of production would have been seized; in short, things might have turned out somewhat better.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Scary stuff

I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time today trying to find out about the coalition government's actual policy initiatives. I found a lot of nothing - like the manifesto, containing the aims of the agreement, but less in the way of substantial, actual, definite stuff that's going to happen.

There is a difference, after all, between what I aim to accomplish and the way I imagine that it will come about. 99% of people want a world at peace, but we don't have one because the ideas of how to promote peace have gone disastrously wrong over and over again. So when a government say they want a free and fair society it means nothing - we all want a free and fair society - what are they going to do about it? What thing, involving the real world, is going to happen to make a free and fair society?

In fact, what I could find of the government's agenda can be summed up in one word: scary. It's scary. We should be scared. I'm actually quite terrified. Shaking, you know?

All governmental departments will undergo a scaling back of, on average, a quarter (excluding health and international aid). That means funding to local authorities is being slashed by 25%, regulatory bodies are being trimmed by 25%, education cut by a whole quarter, etc. This is all for deficit reduction - i.e. the £170 billion we spent last year that we didn't have - we're going to try to pay that off.

Look at your body. Then try to work out which quarter you could do without. If you're saying "it all looks pretty essential to me" congratulations - you don't have my belly. But no-one is pretending there's much fat on the government (well, I say no-one; the coalition are) - Labour, last year, cut £44 billion out of their budget. There ain't much left to be cut that isn't going to really hurt.

But; there is a massive deficit. I'm not saying the coalition are wrong to do this, I'm just scared. Scared like a weak little child. Scared like an X-Factor contestant being beaten over the head with a lead copy of Electric Ladyland.

Then there's the rise, starting January, of VAT from 17.5% to 20%. VAT is the government's share of certain transactions - so there's VAT on air travel and on car maintenance - anything useful, but not absolutely essential. Explaining VAT looks really very dull and torturous. Fact is, a raise affects everybody because, while there is no VAT on milk, there is VAT on things that get you milk, like the petrol in the lorry that takes it to the factory to get bottled, the industrial quantities of plastic, cow psychotherapy, farmer husbandry, etc. (sorry, I'm losing the will to live - I don't want to discuss VAT, nobody does, but it's going to kill us, so I have to say something about it).

That's right, so everything is going to get more expensive because, even those things that don't have VAT on them will be affected. Add to that a two year's pay freeze in the public sector (nurses, doctors, dentists, binmen, teachers, etc.) and that adds up to more expensive stuff being sold to people with the same amount of money. That means people will be able to afford less stuff.

Speaking as a guy who is so poor that yesterday I took a shard of scrap metal from the surf at the beach, carried it a mile to the scrap merchants, got the £1.05 it was worth and then used that money to live for the next two days: stuff getting more expensive is bad.

So, that's as far as I want to go with assessing the coalition's tenure in government so far tonight. It's terribly depressing: you think it's pretty austere times now, just you wait until this time next year.

I don't want to be the harbinger of doom, but the fact that people will have less money and will therefore spend less, leads to less things being bought, MEANING less business, meaning less businesses, meaning less jobs.

Meaning less meaningless jobs.

Expletive

I am usually fairly neutral about Glaswegian footballing matters, but a report that Celtic fans are planning to protest the wearing of poppies because they haven't got THE FUCKING MEMO that Northern Ireland now has a power sharing agreement and the IRA have disbanded and the troubles are over, really burns my sensitive glands.

I do not support wars of any description, but the guys who died in WW1 and WW2 and who were sent over to Afghanistan and Iraq didn't make the policy decisions - they went over there and did their fucking job on the basis that they were protecting us. These Celtic cunts chose not to protest the government's decisions - they weren't in the marches to stop the goddamn Iraq war happening - but now they're getting loud because sectarian tensions are fading and they want to ratchet up the anger again by attacking dead soldiers.

Not the policy makers - the dead soldiers.

Monday 8 November 2010

Coalition Rambling

The government of the UK is something of an oddball: on the right, you have the Conservatives ("The Nasty Party") who want you to work 40 hours a day for six pence and like it; who view the general populace with barely-concealed disgust; who would prefer it if we just had a monarchy and forgo all this nauseating democracy in favour of pomp, circumstance and slavery. And you have the Liberal Democrats ("The Gutless Party") who like to form circles and hold hands (that's what I got out of their manifesto).

The thing is that the Lib Dems have long been seen as a left-wing, unambiguously progressive (if totally hopeless) outfit, while the Tories are quite the opposite. Yet there they are governing the country together.

It's hard not to detest the Tories because David Cameron, whilst I don't think he's a bad man at heart, is plainly clueless, as is his pack of Etonian buddies. These people think that "roughing it" is some sort of rugby slang for involuntary buggery (guffaw) and that rent is something that you have a man to collect for you.

My theory as to how the liberals and the conservatives have found common ground is a simple one: they are the same people. Liberal Democrat MP's have never had to worry about actually having power; the party is a vehicle, not for a serious political career, but for the vacuous dreams of charismatic nobodies. Their backgrounds are Eton, Winchester and Oxbridge, their lineage is traceable to 18th Century European monarchs; they are born conservatives without a backbone, the Cinderella bitches from the same den as the Tory wolves.

And now they all run the country together. I've been in the bunker for the last few months, but tomorrow I will break the emergency glass and take a comprehensive, systematic look at how they're getting on; whisky in one hand, profanisaurus in the other...

Saturday 6 November 2010

Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann, the liberal commentator, has been suspended indefinitely by NBC for making donations to the Democratic party. He didn't use his broadcast to solicit donations, didn't hand out numbers they should call to elect democrats. He, as a private citizen, made some perfectly legal donations to his chosen political party.

Over on Fox news, they have solicited donations, they have given out numbers, but they don't even pretend to be a straight news channel, so no-one bats an eyelid. What they would say on this subject, if they had a modicum of consistency, would be that Olbermann should not have been suspended. He was exercising his rights as a private citizen, but his employer has a policy against that - the policy is wrong, though it is one that tries to ensure the political neutrality of their newscasters (a rather quaint concept in today's America).

Fox won't defend him at all because they are not only a political organisation, but one with no principals to speak of. They won't decry NBC impinging on Olbermann's first amendment rights, as they did with Juan William's firing from APR.

Thursday 14 October 2010

The Cranick Fire and What Government Must Do

Last week a man in Tennessee called the fire department to report a fire. The operator asked his name, checked a list, and told him the firemen would not be coming as the man, Mr. Cranick, had neglected to pay a $75 fire subscription fee.

He offered to pay it right there and then, just come and put some water on the fire that was consuming his home, please. The operator refused, on the principle that if they put the fire out, no-one would bother to pay the subscription fee upfront.

Mr. Cranick's concerned neighbour offered to pay $500 then $5,000 for the fire department to come and put the fire out, but they only budged once the neighbour's house caught fire, and then they only doused his neighbour's home up to the fence line; his name was on the list.

Mr. Cranick's home burned to the ground for the good of the community, according to the local fire chief; everyone will pay their $75 subscription fee knowing that the local firemen are the pawns of faceless bureaucrats who operate purely on capitalistic principles; human decency can take a back seat - they will do their duty when the correct paperwork had been filled out.

Mr. Cranick lost his dog, his cat and his family home, as well as every possession not made of fire-retardant material.

This is an example of poor capitalist governance: from time immemorial fire has been THE principle threat to communities everywhere; a thatched roof catches a spark from a blacksmith's iron and the whole community can lose everything precious to them in a matter of minutes. Civilised government provides, if nothing else, three things: policing, organised defence and fire fighters. The reason for this is that successful, powerful, well-off people don't want to live in places where criminals have free rein, or that might easily be pillaged or where fires can start and won't be stopped.

If it is in the wealthy man's interest AND in the interest of everybody else in the community, you can guarantee it's good policy. The subscription fee for a fire department is an outlying crackpot capitalist notion, conceivable only by barely sentient, obese, complacent, utterly blind, unimaginative luddites, unable to count the words "Good social policy", let alone spell them or have any conception of what they might refer to; in short - only in America.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Democracy: An Interlude

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

- Winston Churchill

"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

- Churchill, again

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

- George Bernard Shaw

"I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct, nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying."

- Mark Twain

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

- John Adams

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Hu Shi

"Fighting for your own freedom is also fighting for national freedom, fighting for your own rights is also fighting for your country's rights - because a free and equal country cannot be made by a group of slaves!"

Jackals and Vultures

Politics is the empty promises of jackals and vultures, the theoretical whimsy of serious Germans hijacked by ambitious hoodlums as a fig-leaf to cover their enormous inadequacy, it is the out of place smile on Gordon Brown's desperate face (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P_lpbLME84), it is the murderous Tony Blair's sheen of acceptability, it is David Cameron's "common touch" (you may have noticed it when Dave looks into the camera and smiles, leaning back slightly, gripping the podium firmly, and your intestines shoot up to your larynx and tries to throttle you in a desperate attempt to preserve your humanity).

Politics is the process by which it is determined who should govern, not how one governs - that is governance which is an almost, but not quite, entirely separate issue. Because people can't be trusted, we need politicians to govern; so the first rule for ambitious politicians is that they can't be people. This rule is studiously followed by all concerned, the good and the bad.

Barrack H. Obama is not a real person; he grew up rising at 4am to study, he taught constitutional law at the foremost university in the world, he has written two books, won the Nobel Peace Prize and in the space of five years went from being unknown to being the President of the USA.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, failed at every venture his father put him in charge of and was a drunken cocaine addict spoilt rich boy who went from being the joke son of a one-term president to declaring victory in an election where he got less votes than the other guy, going on to become the world's most hated figure.

These aren't people; they're cartoons, like Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner. My prejudices paint the colours brighter. I have a sympathetic reaction to Obama because he speaks to his audience like they were intelligent; I hated Bush the first time I saw him walk - an overblown waddle full of unearned confidence. They present the world with what they want the world to see, their political opponents present us with a dimmer view, neither side comes close to true, then the electorate (which might be millions or it might be a dozen people, depending on the system) decides.

So these inhuman ciphers are imprinted on by the electorate, their colours are painted all garish and clashing, in order for one or other party or politician to emerge victorious.

In politics, that is the end: power. There are promises to fulfil, the piper must be paid and all that, but once a politician has power, then the rest of their career is spent doing two things: defending what he has and getting more power.

Monday 11 October 2010

Politics Embryo

Politics is inevitable once you accept a few widely accepted, but not necessarily necessary, facts:

1) You cannot be trusted to run your own life.
One could re-state this as:
1) Other people will always seek to manipulate you.
or
1) Humans are more innately evil than they are innately good.

Whichever formulation you lean towards, and I'm sure there are many more, the central idea remains that individuals need to be coerced into treating each other with any kind of respect or care; humans won't do it on their own. One has good reason to fear anarchy if one thinks people are seething balls of irrational rage waiting to slip the bonds of social responsibility and lash out in every direction.

This leads to:

2) For there to be any such thing as justice it needs to be enforced by an authority.
or
2) You and I must be controlled or we will surely run amok.
or
2) Save me from the bad men!

Once you accept that others cannot be trusted, then one needs an authority to govern them, otherwise who will keep our violent neighbours in check?

and

3) Communities cannot regulate themselves.
or
3) People you know can't be trusted to make good decisions.
or
3) You cannot be trusted to make good decisions.

There are cultures in the world where communities punish crimes, prevent unfair treatment of their members and educate their young without interference from a faceless authority. I suppose within these micro-cultures there is something approximating politics going on, but in every situation where there is more than one person involved there is a kind of politics. But that is not the kind I'm interested in here.

4) Mysterious figures, whom we have often never met, should be given the power to regulate our finances, punish our misdeeds, send our armies into war and speak on behalf of everyone in the country.
or
4) We need God on earth.
or
4) Please; I don't want to think about any of this - can't that guy do it?

Once you have accepted these points as facts, assuming you have a say in the matter, the only question you have left to answer is: "Which guy?" And that is politics.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Capitalism: Zero Value

"Destroy all dreamers with debt and depression" (A Silver Mt. Zion)

Capitalism is the sanctification of greed, the governmental blessing to go forth and whore, steal, cheat, lie, subjugate, litigate, pollute, enslave, abuse; it is the acceptance that the worst of humanity is also the most universal, the most influential on our thinking, the most fun to revel in. Capitalism, whereby goods and services are offered at the price that people are willing to pay, makes no pretence that any object, any service, any person has any innate worth. People and things, the efforts of skilled professionals, works of artistic ("genius"? no; "merit"? not even that) intent, are all cushioned from the consumer by a thick film of bureaucracy that would have you believe in its own necessity.

Contrary to popular belief, however, capitalism is not the only system at work in the UK. The NHS is an example of a government run service that does not operate solely on the principal of profit making (no; it's here to bankrupt every last household in the UK). I didn't really understand this or capitalism itself until I watched the great American healthcare debate unfold last year.

You see, in America, sick people are a burden on the profits of insurance companies, as well on as their families, so the system is designed to make actually claiming on one's health insurance policy as tortuous as possible. They have a system where, if you are a woman and you get pregnant and need maternity leave, your possession of a uterus is considered a "pre-existing condition" and so will not be covered by your policy. Other "pre-existing conditions" that would disqualify you from coverage could be cancer, heart conditions, diabetes, asthma, ulcers; basically if you've had a cold and then get lung cancer five years later, you better hope the guy who (I shit you not) they send to look into your medical history by talking to neighbours, colleagues and family, doesn't find out about it, or you could be paying tens of thousands of dollars for necessary, life saving treatment.

America is, however, a strange, fucked up place. People actually protested on behalf of the insurance companies to preserve their right to make as much profit as they want, accusing Barrack Obama of radical communism, fascism and ruling by dictate, (they don't like them commy nazi monarchists). Why? Because the US is a capitalist country and in a purely capitalist system a service run for the sake of the service itself and not for profit is an anathema. The fact that the US already has "Medicare" for the over 65's, along with several other non-profit government programs, means of course that the US is not a purely capitalist economy, but they weren't to know that; they're cretins. The fact was, to maintain their very way of life, they believed it was necessary to continue to be denied healthcare and to make unworthy cackling leeches richer than God himself for the pleasure.

However, healthcare isn't important here; the whole debate was just a baffling exposition of the manipulative powers of moneyed interests. The reason I brought it to your attention is that it demonstrated to me the essence of capitalism; profit is not just the bottom line, it's the whole dictionary. The goods you buy are valued at zero, the service provided to you is completely worthless; all that matters is that you'll pay x amount for it and it only cost someone y to provide it so they make z as clean profit; if they can go ahead and make the x you pay as clean profit, they will.

I will doubtless revisit capitalism in later articles, but I'll link to an interview from the time of the healthcare debates between a congressman from the left, Anthony Weiner, and host and former congressman from the right, Joe Scarborough. Watch as the penny drops and they realise there is no point in continuing debate as their politics are so fundamentally different they may as well be different species between 3:36 - 5:35 and again at 7:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tUmUk-jLDo&feature=related

Saturday 9 October 2010

The Maps of Eutopia

Politicians may be ambitious, promiscuous, worm-ridden sociopaths, but I don't doubt that most of them, when they first decide to run for office, are genuine in their conviction that they can help society become better; right wrongs, foster happiness, stand up for justice - the whole inspiring conference speech. They have a vision of what they want society to be and it tends to be Eutopia.

The right often feels nostalgia for a time that never really existed: in England, it could be for a time of Victorian gentlemen flattering Elizabethan ladies with Edwardian prose and medieval chivalry, or for some fictitious country village where everybody knows everyone's names and the home fires are always burning and brandy greets good tempered farmers after a hard day's honest toil. In America, it is some 1950's suburban paradise, where father knows best and little Jimmy with his rosy red cheeks plays hopscotch on the sidewalk while mom bakes a pie. Islamic fundamentalists are in a swoon over some non-existent golden age of Islam, where Shariah was uniformly followed by all Arabs everywhere exactly the same way.

All these nostalgic visions are heavily edited, of course: the insidious evil inherent in every one of them never rears its head in the conscious minds of Conservative and Republican alike.

However, in their nightmares they must see the slavery, the racism, the oppression, the violent subjugation of a good portion of the world that made this past possible. Victorian gentlemen might flatter their ladies, but they'd strangle their whores just to hear them squeal and beat their coolies afterwards for sport; the farmer may have toiled, but he also mechanised, so large swathes of the countryside could be worked by a solitary man, leaving the village's labourers out of luck; father's word was law, so his wife darn't whisper a word about her black eyes and little Jimmy knew to stay away from those Clay boys: they were hated by God and cursed with black skin. The Taliban forget just how accommodating Muhammad and every successful Islamic ruler was to other faiths and cultures, but they follow the Kuran to the letter; you don't expect them to READ it too, do you?

The dreams of the left are no easier. Their Eutopia is a land not yet realised, a land of the future; for the communist, it is an egalitarian paradise where workers enjoy an equal share of the fruits of their labour, for the socialist fairness is a meritocracy where one works more, produces more and so gets more, regardless of rank within society or company. Money is abolished entirely, of course (hurray!); everyone just follows the rules because the rules are good for everyone.

That is the starry-eyed vision of those little Lenins you see peddling 'Socialist Worker' on UK campuses. The more practical among them acknowledge the necessity for governance and so advocate a central bureaucracy as the solution and suddenly, through that chink of practicality, comes flooding the light of history with its gulags and its polit bureau, its KGB, Pol Pot and The Great Leap Forward. Our starry-eyed Lenin is blind to all that, he sends us onward into his shadow - Eutopia is always ahead.

The left, however, is not limited to the reds. One also finds theories on reformations of society through technology like in Star Trek (oh, yes; it's a political philosophy) where somehow the ability to travel to other planets stops humans from being greedy and violent (???). The idea that mankind could outgrow his basic desire to dominate and destroy is touching and inspiring, as is the idea of a world where everyone works for the betterment of themselves and society and lives harmoniously with nature. Pandas should be fed; criminals reformed, not punished; races should coexist harmoniously; sex should be a free expression of joy and love, not a power game or a shameful fumbling.

The left is good at mapping Eutopia in the privacy of its own delusions, but when it comes to the route to Eutopia, the way is somewhat less clear. In the past it always seems to have meant millions of people dying through starvation and mad experiments in production, hence the lack of discourse about socialist Eutopias come election time.

I can see it now, the honest politician stands up at his party's conference; "About a tenth of the electorate will be starved to death in order that we can watch our woolly policy of wealth redistribution and social restructuring fail. Then we'll hush it up and declare everything a roaring success, before I kill most of my competition for post of Supreme High Chairman, and rule for thirty years as a paranoid, irrational, cold psychopath, unable to look myself in the mirror without involuntarily vomiting."

Of course, exceptions abound to the rule - hippies who want to shed all technology and live butt naked in the trees are nostalgic for a fictitious past, but are certainly on the left - however, it works as a general rule that the right is nostalgic for a fictitious history and the left dreams of an impossible future.

Friday 8 October 2010

Left and Right: What does it mean?

It is rare to find people who are able to define the differences between left and right without resorting to pin-pointing policies that either side might advocate for. Many bloggers, commentators, newsmen and journalists seem to not have the faintest clue what it is that separates the left from the right, only that they ARE separated and that it's their job to keep in that way.

There is also a lot of talk about principles in political speeches, though not in news media because principles aren't news; they're the unreasoned urges of the power-hungry and shameless voles that scuttle through the ancient halls of power, leaving their mess piled waist deep for the next generation to wade through. However, principles are no less real than policy, they're just less exciting; they don't change. Well, they shouldn't change - they appear to all the time, thanks to the unutterable minions of Satan we call 'politicians' (sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? "What do you do?"; "I'm a politician", the word hides so many multitudes of sin in a mere four syllables, I wonder how many volumes it would take to describe every last drop of disgust that oozes through every decent human being when faced with such fiendish, soulless, perverse creatures?)

But, yes; "left and right: what does it mean?" that's what I'm doing... put simply, the right doesn't want things to change and the left does. Hence "Conservatives" wish to conserve. They want to keep everything just as it is and, if possible, roll back any changes to how it was so it can be that again. That covers traditions, power structures, law, property rights: everything. Basically they want to keep the whip in the hands of the rich to preserve their right to tread on the necks of every pauper not already throttled by debt, starvation and unemployment - but, sorry, that's policy - the principle is, if you're on the right, maintaining traditions and preservation of culture is your driving force.

On the left, change is the principle. Again, that applies to everything; traditions and power structures, etc. This leads to the many-faces of the left, where one may find liberals and socialists and communists; all manner of Messianic hoodlums wanting to tear apart all that is holy and good in the world and rebuild it in their own twisted image, banning all religions, eviscerating the family, indoctrinating sons against fathers, burning history itself and why? Because, in the fevered minds of revolutionaries and theorists (Marx, Castro, Blair) they think they know better. No, sorry, most of that was policy, too. The principle is that the left wants things to change, in order to be reformed into something they view as better.

There is plenty more to add to this, but that's a reasonable place to start.